The NEU needs a plan!

Try teaching during a heatwave. Then try teaching a class of nearly 30 students during a heatwave. And then, imagine that the windows don’t open, or barely open, and there’s no air con or fans. This was the reality in many schools this summer. Chaos, complaints, sickness, exhaustion—for teachers and students alike.

And while we breathed a collective sigh of relief on the few days many schools closed early, we endured many more days spent working in buildings not fit for purpose and in conditions not fit for teaching and learning. There was little to no give from management. When pressured to shorten the school day or close schools outside of the government advisory windows, they hit back with the guilt trip that “we can’t interrupt learning”—as if kids are going to learn anything when they can hardly keep their heads off the desks!

The National Education Union (NEU) had practically zero actionable advice. They repeatedly referenced Section 44 and government advisories, but didn’t mobilise members to take action. Sure, we can ask management to relax the dress code, but when your school feels like a sauna, this is a non-starter. The NEU needs a real plan! For starters, here are two campaigns it can begin to build now to put us in a better position next summer.

Fight school closures with smaller class sizes!

Throughout Britain, schools are closing due to falling birth rates. Between January 2020 and December 2024, 98 schools closed in England. To its credit, the NEU passed a motion at its 2026 conference opposing school closures, increasing teacher numbers and reducing class sizes. This is good.

But there are two problems: first, most rank-and-file members don’t know about this since the NEU does not make it a key pillar of how it organises. Second, and worse, the NEU’s strategy to achieve this is to uphold the example of the “last Labour government”—ie, Tony Blair and his heirs, the ones who gutted state education by introducing academisation! This is a complete dead-end.

This is why despite strike action, many schools have closed: because those strikes remained isolated. And isolated they would remain, since the NEU leadership relies on the Labour government to save schools, not on mobilising the workforce more broadly. To keep schools open, we must merge their struggle with that of neighbouring schools to reduce class sizes. This would not only reduce our workload, but put an end to the threat of redundancies for staff at schools under threat of closure.

Put CEO pay into school budgets!

In 2024-25, 60 CEOs of multi-academy trusts (MATs)—parasitic corporations which run schools with public funds—were paid over £200,000. The highest salary was £530,000! This is all public money! Why should they rake it in while teachers and students are forced to work and learn in miserable conditions?

Again, the NEU is on the record for opposing academisation. Good. But these remain words since the number of academies continues to grow. Thanks to the policies of the “last Labour government”, 83.9% of secondary schools in England are academies or free (independent) schools. These CEOs do nothing useful. The NEU needs to make its paper policy real by mobilising its members to reverse academisation. Kick out heads and senior management from the union, build student-teacher unity against MAT leaderships, and put CEO pay into upgrading schools so we can have heat and air con!

For a fighting NEU!

Daniel Kebede, we’re tired of your constant texts, and we’re tired of voting for ballots which don’t make a real difference to our working conditions. To really save education, show us you’re willing to turn paper motions into action and shake up the status quo in education.